Are You Ready for a Truly Happy New Year?

The great spiritual teacher Ram Dass recently left his body and a legacy of Love. Not the sort of self-love that papers over the cracks but real Love, the light that shines through us from our source. Many years ago, when he had a paralyzing stroke, he saw it as a stroke of luck! He learned to surrender to the tenderness of the people who cared for him physically, making Love shine even brighter through him. 

“Self-improvement” books advise self-love, a tall order in a culture that raised you to be a good little conformist. As kids we were all socialized to believe that some of our ways of thinking and behaving were not acceptable to the world so we shut these impulses down, locking them away as crippling emotions. We were left with a feeling that we are somehow unacceptable as we are. So we made a social structure of ourselves, a personality that looks outward to the world for approval and acceptance.

Ram Dass stopped looking out and chose to look in. There he found a strength that we can all find with an inward gaze. Beyond love, hate and judgments or comparisons of any kind, we discover a divine dimension that looks and sees and judges not. It is a vibration of acceptance in which we can just acknowledge ourselves and other people, allowing ALL of our humanity whether we deem it beautiful or ugly. We can emulate Ram Dass and become the living embodiment of a soul that awakens through acknowledging its humanity AND divinity.

Look inside your own heart and acknowledge the fear, the ugly thoughts or painful emotions and simply allow them to be. Acknowledge and accept them. Welcome them like a lost little child and hand them over to your divinity, your inner light and guide that has been patiently waiting for you to connect with it.  

Are you finally ready for a truly Happy New Year?

If, every day, you commit to allowing your repressed feelings to arise, be acknowledged and handed over to the light, you will find yourself becoming happy in a way that depends on nothing outside of you. You will experience the light of Love that nothing can dim, not even a stroke.